A billion Wi-Fi devices can’t lie

Alpha Micro Components is seeing big growth in the Wi-Fi market which now boosts more than a billion devices.

The distributor has added to its product offering for Wi-Fi modules with the products from GainSpan.

“Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and has emerged as the primary means for devices to gain Internet connectivity,” said Alan Kiltie, sales director Europe at GainSpan.

“Over a billion Wi-Fi devices and over 10 billion embedded microcontrollers are expected to ship in 2011, with an increasing number of these microcontrollers requiring connectivity to the internet or to control devices such as smartphones,” said Kiltie.

The supplier’s Wi-Fi components and modules are aimed at lower coat applications in healthcare and fitness, smart energy, industrial, commercial/building automation and home security markets.

New for 2011 is the GS1500M Wi-Fi module which supports 802.11 b/g/n rates up to 72Mbit/s and peer-to-peer networking.

GainSpan’s Wi-Fi GS1011M and GS1500M modules make it easy to add Wi-Fi connectivity to standard 8-32 bit microcontrollers and are aimed at plug-and-play integration of Wi-Fi into embedded platforms using SPI or UART interfaces.

“Most people think of Wi-Fi as a “power hungry” wireless medium but GainSpan has some clever technology that delivers ultra low power Wi-Fi which opens up lots of new opportunities for customers wanting to tap into the well-established and readily available Wi-Fi ecosystem,” said Christos Papakyriacou MD at Alpha Micro.